San Antonio Sherpa

October is Museum Month in San Antonio! Members of participating organizations, as well as their employees, will qualify for free or discounted admission. Check out the Museum Month website for more information. The following museums will be participating:

Artpace: Artpace was founded by artist, collector, and businesswoman Linda Pace and opened to the public in 1995. Pace conceived of Artpace as a laboratory of dreams, providing artists from all over the world with an environment that would encourage experimentation and growth.

Blue Star Contemporary: Blue Star is the Anchor of San Antonio Art. Home to San Antonio’s longest-running contemporary art space, the complex also features a varied collection of arts venues, shops, and studios with ample opportunity to quench your hunger and thirst.

Briscoe Western Art Museum: The Briscoe Western Art Museum, named in honor of the late Texas Governor, Dolph Briscoe, Jr. and his wife, Janey, preserves and interprets the art, history, and culture of the American West through engaging exhibitions, educational programs, and public events reflective of the region’s rich traditions and shared heritage.

DoSeum: The DoSeum opened on June 6, 2015, and became a place where children are inspired to use their inner creativity and curiosity to learn through play. The majority of the exhibits at The DoSeum boast a science, technology, and mathematics (STEM) focus, which we integrate with literacy and creative art concepts.

UTSA Institute of Texan Cultures: The museum opened as the Texas State Exhibits Pavilion, which was built for the 1968 HemisFair celebration. Today, the museum pursues a mandate a component of the state’s center for multicultural education by investigating the ethnic and cultural history of the state and presenting the resulting information with a variety of offerings.

McNay Art Museum: The McNay Art Museum is a modern art museum in San Antonio specializes in 19th- and 20th-century European and American art. Since Marion McNay’s original bequest in 1950, the museum’s collection has expanded to over 20,000 works including Medieval, Renaissance art, 19th- through 21st- century European and American paintings, sculptures, photographs, one of the finest collections of prints and drawings in the Southwest.

San Antonio Missions National Historical Park: The San Antonio Missions tell the stories of the people who came into the Spanish missions to live in the 1700s. Acculturating and converting the indigenous population in order to become Spanish citizens reverberates today in the southwest United States. The four southernmost Spanish colonial missions—Concepción, San José, San Juan, and Espada—are included in the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, which officially opened in 1983.

San Antonio Museum of Art: The San Antonio Museum Association was chartered in 1925. In 1981, after a $7.2 million renovation and conversion of the historic Lone Star Brewery complex the San Antonio Museum of Art was opened to the public in its current location. The Museum houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, as well as Asian, art in the southern United States.

The Southwest School of Art: The Southwest School of Art is a nationally-recognized leader in arts education, currently offering studio programs for more than 4,000 adults, children and teens annually on its campus. The school also organizes contemporary art exhibitions and houses a small history museum, and a lunch café.

San Antonio Art League & Museum: Founded in 1912, the San Antonio Art League & Museum is a must-see architectural jewel-box for lovers of traditional and contemporary art. Built in 1896, this intimate house-turned-museum and gallery now house over 600 works in its permanent collection, which focuses on Texas artists.

Villa Finale: Villa Finale was purchased in 1967 by preservationist Walter Nold Mathis, the twelfth owner in a procession of increasingly colorful inhabitants. Mathis spent nearly two years restoring Villa Finale (so named as it was his final residence) and years thereafter filling it with the extraordinary collections, including European furniture and artwork, American silver, and art by popular Texas artists such as Julian Onderdonk and Mary Bonner, that still occupy the home. Villa Finale is perhaps most noted for its very large collection of memorabilia related to Napoleon Bonaparte, a historical figure of great interest to Walter Mathis.

Witte Museum:  San Antonio businessman Alfred W. Witte died September 22, 1925, leaving $65,000 to fund a museum in Brackenridge Park. The Wittie Museum is dedicated to natural history, science, and South Texas heritage. The permanent collection features historic artifacts and photographs, Texas art, textiles, the world-renowned Hertzberg Circus Collection, dinosaur bones, cave drawings, Texas wildlife dioramas and the four-story H-E-B Science Treehouse, in addition to nationally acclaimed traveling exhibits.